by Neal Asher
“The affected crew are in isolation and purging, and I have requested a code update.”
Orlik felt the confirmation of this from Sprag.
“Do you wish me to fall out of formation for the interim?” asked Brogus.
Orlik considered, then rejected the idea. “No, stay where you are and keep me updated.”
But even as he cut the link, Orlik could not help but feel that something about that captain was off. As was the case with his reaver, it wasn’t something definite and major, but an accumulation of small things: such as his comment about punishing the crewmember—Orlik expected this from normal prador but not from the Guard, because it would be counterproductive. There was also the fact that these problems did not explain everything going wrong with the reaver. And the old armour and style of Brogus’s sanctum . . . but no, Orlik felt his own tension and fear had begun to spill over into a generalized paranoia. He dismissed it from his mind.
ORLANDINE
How much do you remember?” asked Cog, sitting on the floor beside her.
Orlandine studied him. He had a kind face and he was hunching in on himself to try and look less threatening. But she knew he was probably quite capable of ripping off the limbs from any of the surrounding prador.
“I remember most of my life,” she answered, “but to survive I wiped the AI crystal in my skull, so I lost a lot of other information.”
“Dragon wants you in the Ghost Drive Facility and capable of talking to the weapons platforms—capable of changing their orders,” said Cog. “Is that possible?”
“I don’t know. All the security codes I possessed are gone from my present form. I am human now with blank AI crystal linked to my mind.” She closed her eyes for a moment and probed that connection. The crystal remained linked in her skull and throughout her body to other hardware which it had not been necessary to sacrifice. This hardware had enabled her to see in the dark and translate prador language, but what abilities she possessed beyond that she had no idea. “I can talk to them but do not know if I can instruct them without the codes, and without the other data I possessed. They must be prepared to recognize and obey me without that.”
She did not mention another problem. Though still connected up, she was no longer fully haiman. She had AI crystal and a transceiver in her skull. But she had lost most of her support system, because it had been mainly the Jain tech she had sacrificed. If she connected in that facility and tried to talk to those platform AIs, it might well kill her.
“We need to get into that facility to find out, then,” said Cog.
She abruptly stood up. She wasn’t the haiman she had been but the project here, and at the accretion disc, was hers and her responsibility. She needed to think and she needed to be precise.
“So, Dragon wants me inside the facility, so I can issue orders to the weapons platforms at the accretion disc,” she announced to everyone.
Croos had been talking with Angel, and both of them stopped and swung towards her. The rest of the prador in the chamber, who had been checking weapons and supplies and generally getting ready for a fight, also became attentive.
“Dragon has instructed this because it is apparently what the Clade does not want. As is usual with Dragon, he has not sufficiently explained himself, but I agree and I will go there with you. The Clade is working for the Wheel and we must work against it.” She glanced at Cog as he too stood, and she gave him a nod of acknowledgement.
“However,” she continued, “I no longer possess the codes that would give me access, and the drones there will not let me in without them.”
“We have been discussing this,” said Croos. “It’s possible we don’t need to go past the drones. We just need to get past the Clade.”
“Explain,” said Orlandine, suddenly feeling stronger now she had spoken out.
“The facility sits on a collection of fusion reactors and a powerful hardfield defence. The ejection ports for the hardfield generators egress in a cave system below the facility.”
She gazed at Croos for a long moment then said dryly, “Doubtless your knowledge of this possible point of access is extensive.”
“It is,” Croos allowed.
She wasn’t surprised. The prador here, just like many of the Polity personnel, were agents respectively of the king or Earth Central. They would all have made plans to cover any . . . eventualities.
“So what is the plan?” she asked.
Croos waved a claw towards one of the tunnels behind. “We head out of the city that way. It will take us to an exit about two miles from the facility. We go overground to a concealed entrance that leads down into the cave system, then up an ejection port into the facility.”
“And above ground is the Clade,” noted Cog.
“It’s about half a mile overland to the entrance,” said Croos. He turned as one of the other prador brought something over and handed it to him. Taking this object in one claw, he moved back and dumped it at Orlandine’s feet.
She looked at the armoured suit. It was an old design but the armour itself had that brassy look of prador hull metal. She continued staring, feeling some resentment towards this example of her vulnerability. But she had to accept it and so stooped down, found the panel on one wrist and activated it. The thing stood up and opened completely down the back, including its legs, while its helmet tipped forwards onto the chest. She reached up to that point on her collarbone and retracted her clothing, and stepped naked into the armour, pushing her feet down into its boots. It quickly closed around her, the helmet hinging over her head, foam formers closing on her legs. She moved and it moved with her, barely noticeable, while the head-up display, the HUD, showed her the power status and clear diagnostics.
“That good?” asked Cog.
“It will do,” she said grudgingly.
Cog turned back to Croos. “We should wait for Trike—he’ll be useful.”
Orlandine turned and stared at him—a weird twisting sensation ran through her body from her skull to her feet. She felt a buzz, almost of panic, in response to this and did not understand it. However, she knew she did not want to wait for this Trike—something about the hooper, whom she had never met, scared her.
“We can wait no longer,” said Croos. “My guards are retreating— there are Clade in the tunnels. We need to go now.”
The prador—ten of them including Croos—started trooping towards the tunnel he had indicated earlier. Orlandine shrugged herself into motion, familiarizing herself with the suit almost at once. Cog moved along beside her and, a moment later, Angel on the other side. They were on their way, and she now wore prador armour to protect her. But still she might die in the facility, if not before. She felt thoroughly and utterly vulnerable and, with her memories coming back more clearly, she realized this had never been a consideration before when she had entered human time.
As the prador entered the tunnel in single file, she could hear distant, echoey concussions and the sounds of weapon fire. One prador abruptly came through another entrance, its armour smoking. It followed the rest. Meanwhile, prador still in the chamber were fixing hemispherical objects against the wall, blinking displays of prador glyphs on surface screens. She understood at once. The prador guarding the tunnels would be left to fend for themselves and, once those here were clear of the chamber, Croos intended to blow it up, to stop the Clade units from following them. This would also prevent Trike catching up. She did not know why she was glad about that.
ORLIK
After his conversation with Captain Brogus, Orlik opened up the link the weapons platforms had provided, also complementing it with sensor data from his fleet. The stuff coming from the attack pods inside the disc had now degraded. A few of them had self-destructed when Jain tech reached an unsafe level of penetration, while others were losing their sensors to it. They were also being burned by the massive EMR in there, which itself had to be compensated for. Though the data in essence shone a glaring light inside the accretion disc, a lot of i
nterpretation was necessary. Sensors needed to run protective routines to prevent overload as well. Still, to Orlik’s perception, the accretion disc became transparent across much of the emitted spectrum, and he could now gaze upon an event few prador or humans had ever seen.
“Impressive,” Sprag commented.
The previously inactive star had heated up. But it was still stubbornly refusing to ignite with fusion. Maybe this was because the Harding black hole, by pulling on the star, was acting to reduce the pressure gradient throughout it. Sprag offered the math on this. Briefly scanning it, Orlik noted that again it described what should be happening but plainly wasn’t. Some small fusion ignition should have occurred—a burn and then burn-out. Again, either the math was wrong or something odd was happening here. Still, Sprag was right: impressive.
The star had contracted at the poles, its equator bloating, and from there a tail extended out to touch a seemingly invisible point in space which glared like the tip of an arc welder. The Harding black hole—a relatively minuscule object on this scale—had a titanic effect. With every peak in EMR emissions, that point grew more defined. A rotating disc of glowing plasma expanded around the spin of the hole. Orlik mentally settled himself to watch, damping all other considerations in his mind. Sprag was right—this would soon be over so he might as well enjoy it.
With a further expansion of the plasma disc, the particle fountains from the poles of the black hole flashed into visibility across much of the spectrum. Sprag drew his attention to other data: one of the weapons platforms was firing up its fusion drive over the accretion disc. It shifted to a safe distance, away from where one of the polar fountains speared out of the disc. It wasn’t actually in the path of the thing, but the catastrophic event about to occur could move the black hole enough to put the platform in the way. And energy readings on that fountain were immense—like a particle beam weapon a couple of miles across.
Closer views of the sun showed oceans of fire heaving up into that stretching tail. Even as Orlik watched, the whole orb began distorting, straining up towards the black hole. The tail shortened as the two objects closed on each other. The spinning disc around the black hole finally ate up the last of that tail and started cutting into the surface of the sun like a circular saw. It changed colour, from a pale blue to hot orange, as it wrenched up more materials and dug deeper and deeper. Only minutes later, half of it had sunk inside the star, which began boiling up and stretching around it. And the black hole reached its surface. Had this been a planet, even a gas or ice giant, by now it would be breaking up and incorporating in that disc. But it seemed as if the star, with a little indigestion, was swallowing the black hole.
“Big disruption,” Sprag muttered, instantly relaying the data to Orlik’s mind.
Waves of U-space disruption were generating and flowing out from this event. Though, Orlik conceded, location wasn’t something you could really refer to when talking about that continuum. But gravity waves were also spreading out in the real from that point. Hurling out giant solar flares and sheets of radiating gas, the star’s spin became visible, as mountains bigger than worlds fled around its circumference. It began to settle, radiating heavily in infrared, hot and burning, but still no fusion. It wasn’t spherical either, but pill-shaped.
“That is in no math,” said Sprag.
The dark spot appeared at the pole Orlik could see, then it seemed as if black cracks were spreading from it. Only as these started to connect up did he see the shapes they were forming. A honeycomb grid spread across the surface of the star, which began to shrink. Being sucked into the black hole? He didn’t think so. It all just seemed too even and mechanical. Its shape also began to change—shrinking in at the waist, it regained its spherical shape. As he watched, the grid joined up with the one that had grown from the other pole. Then the whole thing darkened. It still sat there on the gravity map of the system, but the attack pods sensed a steep decline in emitted radiation.
“Something else,” Orlik noted.
A flash of white sparked on the surface, spreading out, then a long line scribed around it and seemingly peeled something up. It shot out and round, travelling close to light speed. A U-signature was generated and the thing bounced, disappearing, but leaving a glowing line through realspace. The object then reappeared travelling slowly, a debris cloud spreading out around it.
“Things just got more complicated,” noted Sprag.
They certainly had. Orlik did not need to reassess the data to know what he had seen. He surmised that somehow this ship, for that was all it could be, had been trapped in U-space, and the black hole hitting the inactive star had freed it. Escaping the massive gravity, it had tried to U-jump and been damaged by the effort. But still, this must have been the Wheel’s plan all along, driving events to this point. And that did not bode well for either the Polity or the prador. What had just been released into their world?
TRIKE
Brull, the prador perambulating ahead in the underground tunnel, came to an abrupt halt. Trike nearly walked into him, not because he couldn’t see—he could, despite the lack of lighting here, which was odd—but because he felt out of it, his attention focused inwards. The prador reached out with one claw and rattled it against a wall. He issued a few hissing clicks that seemed like an expression of thoughtful impatience.
“There a problem?” asked Trike, then paused, replaying in his mind the distorted sound of his voice.
A second later, there came a rumbling blast from ahead and a few seconds after that a roaring wind fogged the tunnel with dust.
“Change of plan,” said Brull. “We go overland.”
“What happened?” Trike asked. His voice still sounded wrong. “Croos just blew up our hideaway to stop the Clade down here following him,” Brull explained. “And that stops us too.”
Trike reached up and put a finger in his mouth, feeling a projecting ridge along the centre of his tongue. A leech mouth in his tongue again? That was usually an outward sign of an inner turmoil he did not have now.
“Which means . . .” he said distractedly. “How many of the Clade are down here? You said the main swarm headed for the facility.”
“Less than a hundred now.” Brull was offhand.
“Right,” said Trike, still distracted.
He stuck out his tongue and found he could extend it far enough to see it quite clearly. He probed with his fingers. The ridge along the top was the apex of a triangle—his tongue was triangular in section and now slightly ribbed. He felt his way along it. There didn’t seem to be any opening but the end felt rough, kind of odd, like pressing his fingertip against the end of a brush. He turned it up towards his nose, discovering its surprising mobility, and inspected the end. A triangle, evenly packed with circular objects, presented itself to him. He then tried to stick out the internals of the tongue, as he had been able to previously when it possessed a leech mouth. Circular clumps of metallic fibres oozed out, and one of them spread like the end of a filter-feeding worm. He snapped them back, and then his tongue, into his mouth. Damned sure now that it had been no parasite hitching a ride on his body.
“They hit Polity personnel hardest. We were fortified and kept them out of the enclave, but they’ve been on us right from the start. When they broke in we fled down here,” Brull offered. “I guess we’re a loose cannon they wanted to spike.”
“Your translator is good,” Trike noted, his focus returning.
“I don’t use a translator.”
This prador was distinctly odd. He seemed a lot smarter and more loquacious than expected. But then, Trike had never met a prador before, so how could he judge? Anyway, Brull must use a translator because surely he didn’t possess the vocal equipment for even speaking Anglic?
“We go here,” said Brull, leading the way down a narrow side tunnel, the edges of his carapace scraping against the walls.
Knowledge, again not his own, slunk into Trike’s mind. Brull was one of the King’s Guard—one of the king’
s family—and as such heavily mutated by the Spatterjay virus. Few people knew this because of the Guard’s concealing armour. They did not want it known how the virus changed their bodies, or continued to change them in radical ways. Brull might even have developed the vocal equipment that made him capable of human speech. Or he might be lying.
As he followed, staring hard at the prador as if to try and penetrate that armour, Trike thought of Brull as a prador version of him. Then he reconsidered. Brull was a prador version of Cog, while Trike . . . Trike was a rare example of what Old Captains could become. Only one other resembled him, as far as he knew, that being Cog’s brother Jay Hoop, the monstrous pirate who had run the thralling trade out of Spatterjay during the war. In Cog’s memories, Trike had seen what he had become. Perhaps that was it. Perhaps you needed to be a monster inside for that to be fully manifest on the exterior. Trike pondered on what the prador version of a monster might be and found himself unable to come up with anything. He then wondered if Jay Hoop had possessed a triangular tongue . . .
The tunnel curved up and daylight became visible ahead. Brull paused and, using his lower manipulator appendages, detached a coneshaped object from his under-carapace. With armoured but soft-tipped fingers, he worked the pit control on the end of this before passing it up to one claw. He stuck the thing on the wall.
“Should slow them down,” he commented, scrambling ahead with alacrity. “Let’s move.”
Since Trike had seen Cog doing the same thing in the tunnel which they’d used to enter the city, he hurried after him to a safe distance.
Soon the ceiling disappeared and they walked out through a deep ditch. Then piles of scrap displaced the walls, under a sky now scattered with wisps of cloud. From behind came a boom and the tunnel mouth belched dust and fragments of stone. Trike surprised himself by hoping that the explosive had fully collapsed the tunnel. Had he lost his urge to fight and destroy the Clade?
They wound their way along between the stacked remains of ground cars of a style unfamiliar to Trike. The other within him supplied detail. This junkyard contained the kind of cars the inhabitants of Jaskor had used before Orlandine turned up and started bringing in Polity technology. The old cars were steadily being replaced by grav-cars or displaced by fast, efficient transport systems. Shortly they reached the end of this aisle of scrap and came to an open area where a few whole cars were scattered.
